Historical Events in July and August

July

1 Poet Vladimir Lugovskoy (1901-1957), a leading romantic poet of the 1920s, was born on this day 100 years ago. His first verses “The Year 1920” and “Reconnaissance Mission,” were inspired by the revolution and the Civil War and were published in Novy Mir magazine. His most notable books of poetry include Blue Spring (1956) and the autobiographical Middle Age (1958). Lugovskoy taught for many years at the Gorky Literary Institute, counting among his students many famous Russian poets. He once summed up his life as follows: “I am a very uncomfortable man. I know all the contradictions of the century.”

3 Seventy-five years ago the writer Vladimir Bogomolov (1926) was born. He made his debut in the late 1950s with stories such as “First Love” (1958) and “Ivan” (1958). The latter story provided the story line for Andrei Tarkovsky’s first film, My Name is Ivan (1962), starring Nikolai Burlyaev (see August 3). The film brought Tarkovsky instant fame: “We have never before seen war like this,” a critic wrote. But Bogomolov’s most famous work was the thrilling war novel, In August 1944—still a Russian top-seller (and recently made into a movie starring Yevgeny Mironov).

5 One hundred years ago today actor and theater director Sergei Obraztsov (1901-1992) was born. A gifted romantic tenor, he made his debut as a singer at the Musical Theater named for Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Later he began performing in solo concerts with puppets, which was to become his true vocation. Beginning in 1928 and until nearly the end of his life, Obraztsov headed the State Central Puppet Theater. Many of his puppet shows became classics: Puss in Boots, The Wish of the Fish, Alladdin’s Magic Lamp and Cinderella. His puppet shows were as popular with adults as with children, and his “Extraordinary Concert” toured 38 countries and was translated into 24 languages.

7 Ivan Kupala Day.

10 Sixty years ago, the battle for Smolensk and the Western approach to Moscow began, ending on September 16, 1941. German generals called this battle the “end of the blitzkrieg.” Despite a two-fold superiority in personnel, artillery, and aircraft (and a four-fold superiority in tanks), fascist forces could not overcome repeated Soviet attacks on their flanks. This delayed their capture of the Orsha-Smolensk-Vitebsk region, giving Soviet troops more time to prepare for the Battle of Moscow, where the German tide was finally halted.

12 Day of the Apostles Peter and Paul. Today is also the 140th anniversary of the birth of composer and conductor Anton Arensky (1861-1906). Pyotr Tchaikovsky called this graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory “a great talent.” Arensky studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and himself went on to become a brilliant teacher (Sergei Rakhmaninov was one of his pupils). He wrote several textbooks for students and his “1000 Tasks on Harmony” is still used by modern music teachers.

19 Ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova (born 1941), one of the superstars of Soviet ballet, turns 60 today. Her debut in Mikhail Fokin’s Chopiniana brought her the first taste of success. In her main roles during the 1960s-1970s (in the ballets Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Spartacus, Romeo and Juliet) Bessmertnova resurrected the spirit of romantic ballet  with her “fine sense of style.” (Russian Ballet Encyclopedia). In 1968 she married the Bolshoi Theater’s chief choreographer, Yuri Grigorovich, and danced in all of his premieres. Ballet experts praised her dance for being so technically perfect and so richly expressive that it gave the impression she was improvising. The role for which she was perhaps most famous was in the title role of Adolph Adan’s ballet, Giselle.

20 Actress Lyudmila Chursina (1941) was born 60 years ago today. She made her debut in Lev Kulidzhanov’s film When Trees Were Big (1961) while still a student at the Shchukin Theater School. She acted at the Vakhtangov Theater after graduation, in 1984 moving to Moscow’s Russian Army Theater. However, she is most famous for her cinematic roles, namely as the romantic Olesya (based on Alexander Kuprin’s story of the same name) where she mesmerized audiences with her siren-like charm. Other memorable films included River Ugryum, Authentic Russia and Privalov’s Millions. Chursina defined her acting thus: “I want to show a Russian woman as strong, proud, capable of self-denial, even of a heroic deed.”

24 The actor Igor Ilyinsky (1901-1987), once called “the living chronicle of cinema,” was born 100 years ago. Ilyinsky was known as the best comic actor in the era of silent film, and every film he was in was a financial success (The Tailor from Torzhok, The Kiss of Mary Pickford, The Case of Three Million, St. Jorgen’s Day). In the famous film (with sound) Volga-Volga (1938), by Grigory Alexandrov, he played the archetypal Soviet bureaucrat Byvalov. Joseph Stalin loved the film and Ilyinsky was invited to a ceremonial dinner at the Kremlin. When Stalin approached his table, he asked, “Who is this?” “Well-known artist Ilyinsky, comrade Stalin,” came the reply. “Known to whom? Not to me ...” Ilyinsky was at a loss, to say the least. “He just played a good role in the film Volga-Volga,” an apparatchik told the dictator, to which Stalin cracked a broad smile and said, “Ah, comrade Byvalov! We bureaucrats, we will always understand each other.” In 1941, Ilyinsky was awarded the Stalin Prize for his role as Byvalov. In 1956, he starred in Eldar Ryazanov’s comedy Carnival in Moscow, playing censor Ogurtsov and again earning wide acclaim. Ilyinsky’s theatrical career was no less successful. In his youth he worked with avant-garde director Vsevolod Meyerhold; in later years he worked at the Maly Theater, acting in all the classic roles, including in Ostrovsky’s Sheep and Wolves, Griboyedov’s Woe from Wit, and as Khlestakov in Gogol’s The Inspector General. Towards the end of his life, Ilyinsky, who stayed fit playing tennis, was chief director of the Maly Theater, where he also acted in such philosophical plays as Leo Tolstoy’s Power of Darkness. In his last role he played Tolstoy in Moldovan playwright Ion Drutse’s Return on One’s Circles.

27 Today is the 65th anniversary of the birth of ballet dancer Maris Liepa (1936-1989). Born in Riga he graduated from that city’s ballet school, then from the Moscow School of Choreography. In 1960 he joined the Bolshoi Theater troupe. An inspirational dancer, Liepa combined a superior technique with dramatic expressiveness; his style was masculine yet extremely versatile and flexible. Ballet critics called him “one of the most interesting dancing actors.” Some of his best roles were in Sleeping Beauty, Anna Karenina, Romeo & Juliet and Don Quixote. The role of Crassus in Aram Khachaturyan’s Spartacus was the peak of his art, in which, according to the Encyclopedia of Ballet, he created “an impressive image of evil, violence and thirst for power.” Liepa won the Vaclav Nizhinsky (1971) and Marius Petipa (1977) prizes and was made People’s Artist of the USSR in 1976. In his late years, he worked as a teacher and choreographer. His son and daughter both followed in his footsteps and made successful careers in ballet.

28 The actress Natalia Belokhvostikova (born 1951) was born on this day 50 years ago. At 13 she acted in her first film, Mark Donskoy’s Heart of a Mother. She was so enamored with acting that in 1968, without graduating from secondary school, she enrolled in the Russian Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), where she was taught by Sergei Gerasimov, one of the leading lights of Soviet cinema. In her second year at the institute she was cast as the daughter of a scientist/activist in Gerasimov’s film By the Lake. She starred alongside Vasily Shukshin and earned a prize at the Karlovy-Vary film festival. Belokhvostikova’s film heroines— noble, pure and a bit naïve—graced over 20 films, including The Shore (based on Yuri Bondarev’s novel of the same name), Snake Catcher, A Glass of Water and Tehran-43.

28 Today would have been the 90th birthday of Nikolai Kuznetsov (1911-1944), one of the Soviet Union’s most heroic and audacious intelligence officers. Born in Siberia, he grew up amidst a German community there and thus had native fluency in German. He joined the NKVD in 1939 and initially established a network of informers among Moscow ballet dancers. Codenamed “Pukh” (Fluff), he was parachuted behind enemy lines at Rovno, Ukraine, wearing a German supply officer’s uniform. Posing as German officer Paul Zeibert, he repeatedly infiltrated German held areas, establishing a wide intelligence network, and boldly assassinated German military governors in broad daylight, after pronouncing to them their death sentence. He provided critical intelligence that helped uncover a plot to attack the US Embassy during the 1943 Big Three Conference in Teheran. But Kuznetsov did not outlive the war. In 1944, while trying to recross the front lines to join Soviet troops, he was surrounded by Ukrainian nationalists cooperating with the Nazis. He blew himself up with a hand grenade rather than surrender, killing several enemy soldiers along with himself.

August

3 Today is the 55th birthday of the actor Nikolai Burlyayev (born 1946). At 16 he starred in Andron Konchalovsky’s film The Boy and the Dove (1962), which won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival for Best Short Fiction Film. Director Andrei Tarkovsky then handpicked Burlyayev for the lead roles in My Name is Ivan (1962) and then Andrei Rublyov (1969), both huge domestic and international successes. Of Burlyayev’s recent success, one should mention Wartime Romance (1983), by Pyotr Todorovsky, a poignant love story that takes place on the homefront during wartime, and, topical to this issue, his role as Yeshua in a 1994 version of Master and Margarita. Burlyaev, a veteran of over 30 films, is now actively involved in the promotion of Russian films and spearheads the organization of a Festival of Slavic Film.

8 Writer and literary critic Nina Berberova (1901-1993) was born 100 years ago today. She once wrote: “Fate marked me with one circumstance: I have two bloods in my veins: Northern—Russian, and Southern—Armenian.” In 1922, Berberova moved to Berlin with her husband, the great poet Vladimir Khodasevich. Later they settled in Paris. Her novels dedicated to life in emigration, The Last and the First, The Ruler, and Without Sunset won valued praise from Vladimir Nabokov. In the 1960s Berberova moved to the US, where she wrote her memoirs, My Italics and Iron Lady (1981).

10 The centenary of actor Nikolai Khmelyov (1901-1945) is today. Khmelyov joined Stanislavsky’s Moscow Art Theater (MKhAT) in 1924. Gifted with a multifaceted talent, he excelled in all roles, both tragic (The Days of the Turbins, Three Sisters, Anna Karenina) and lightly humorous (Hot Heart, Uncle’s Dream). Later in his career, Khmelyov also distinguished himself as a theater director, plus starred in a number of films. The best of the latter was the screen version of Anton Chekhov’s story The Man in a Case, in which Khmelyov played a hermit-bureaucrat afraid of real life.

13 Actor Boris Chirkov (1901-1982) would have been 100 today. He became immortal in Soviet film as the old peasant in Chapaev (1934) who complained: “The Whites may come and they may rob you; the Reds may come, and they may rob you too, so what’s the poor peasant to do?” Soon thereafter, Chirkov starred in what was to be a “Soviet blockbuster,” Maxim’s Youth (1935 – followed by two more films in a series known as The Maxim Trilogy). In it, he played a character meant to be the archetype of a Bolshevik. Top Goskino (State Committee on Cinema) critics lashed out at the film, claiming that the protagonist did not look like a true Bolshevik, and when the film was about to be shelved, even Vyacheslav Molotov, a distant relative of Chirkov, would not step in. But then Soviet Critic #1, Joseph Stalin, had his say. During a screening of the film at the Kremlin, Mikhail Kalinin began to criticize the film: “You call that a factory? I don’t recall such a factory in Petersburg.” And a voice thick with Georgian vowels spoke up: “The film directors are in the hall. Those who wish to can make comments after the film.” Needless to say, no more comments were made and criticism after the film was largely superfluous. Stalin approved the film and Chirkov’s career skyrocketed. In 1935 he was awarded the title of Artist Emeritus; in 1949 he received the title of People’s Artist of the USSR. Despite blessings from the Kremlin, Chirkov was truly popular with Soviet filmgoers, who loved his positive, charming and simple film characters, and even his only antagonist role, as anarchist Nestor Makhno, in Alexander Parkhomenko (1941). His popularity peaked in the 1950s after his starring role in the comedy True Friends (1954), and he acted up until the mid-1970s.

14 The composer Mikael Tariverdiev (1931-1996) was born on this day. His art covered all musical genres, from chamber to instrumental music, but Tariverdiev was most prolific and most famous as the composer of film soundtracks—indeed, he wrote music for 134 Russian films. The hugely famous TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring and the film The Irony of Fate were both touched by his genius.

17 Nikolai Gubenko, actor and film director, was born on this day in 1941. Gubenko acted at the Taganka Theater in its heyday (1964-1969), while at the same time starring in films such as No Need for a Password (1967), A Soldier Came from the Front (1972) and They Fought for the Fatherland (1975). As a director, Gubenko was famous for his film Podranki (1977), about war orphans, for the comedy From the Life of Vacationers (1981), and for Life, Tears and Love (1984), about a home for the elderly. His wife and muse, Zhanna Bolotova, starred in all three of these films. In 1987, after the departure of Yuri Lyubimov, Gubenko was the chief director at Taganka (which later split in two after Lyubimov came back). More recently, Gubenko’s career took a political turn, seemingly to the detriment of his art. In 1989-1991 he was USSR Minister of Culture. Gubenko is presently a deputy in the State Duma (from the communist party’s list), where he has been a vocal opponent of repatriation of war treasures to Germany.

18 Today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of General Matvei Platov (1751-1818), the legendary Cossack military commander and founder of the Cossack capital of Novocherkassk (the “Paris of the Steppe”). At 20, Platov was already in charge of a regiment. Three years later, in 1774, he became a hero after he and a small detachment, outnumbered 20-to-1, held out against the attacks of Crimean Khan Devlet-Girey. In 1789, Platov won further glory in Russia’s victory over the Turks near Kaushany, when Turkish commander Pasha Zaynal Gassan was taken prisoner. Platov also struck a decisive blow at the Battle of Borodino, in 1812, leading five Cossack regiments in a strike at Napolean’s rear. He was awarded the title of “Count” by Tsar Alexander I.

22 The centenary of architect Dmitry Tchechulin (1901-1981) is today. Arguably the most famous architect associated with the reconstruction of Moscow in the 1930s, he forever changed the face of this ancient city. Among others, he designed the circle line metro stations “Komsomolskaya,”  and “Kievskaya,” as well as the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall. But his most notable contributions came after WWII. In 1945 he was appointed chief architect of Moscow. After adding a few floors onto the top of Mossoviet (City Hall), he undertook what was to become his major legacy: Moscow’s seven vysotkas (skyscrapers). Tchechulin also designed the Pekin and Rossiya hotels and, last but not least, in 1980 he finished his last work: the building for the Government of the then Soviet Russian Federation, today commonly known as the “White House.”

28 One-hundred and ten years ago, actor and director Mikhail Chekhov (1891-1955) was born. He was, MKhAT Theater Director Konstantin Stanislavsky said, a “genius.” Chekhov excelled in plays by Turgenev and by his uncle, Anton Chekhov. In 1918, he created his own theater school where he both taught and acted. In 1922, after the death of Yevgeny Vakhtangov, Chekhov headed the first MKhAT theater studio. In 1928 he published his book The Road of an Actor, moving to Germany that same year. He acted on the stage in Vienna and Berlin, and starred in the films Troika, The Ghost of Happiness and others. In 1932 he settled in Latvia with his students. But after the fascist coup there, he moved to the US, where, in 1936, he established a school in America where he developed his “theory of imitation”—the method encourages the actor to reach total oneness with his character; while similar to Stanislavsky in his theories, Chekhov insisted on the use of imagination as opposed to memory in creating a role. In 1946, Chekhov published his second book, On the Technique of Acting—still a main textbook for American theatrical scholars and teachers. In 1942, composer Sergei Rakhmaninov helped Chekhov get work in Hollywood, and he went on to star in 11 American films, such as Song of Russia (1943), Holiday for Sinners (1952), Rhapsody (1954), and Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945).